Boot Drive tripled in size over night

[sboerup]

My 2010 Mac Pro has been running smooth and performance is impressive. After my fresh install of OSX 10.6.4, and installing my apps, my boot drive was only using 19.5GB of space. This was verified in Disk Utility, and the numbers in the image below add up to the same amount.

Out of nowhere this morning I see that it is now taking up 60GB worth of space. I'm trying to find out where it went, and what is taking up all that space. I'm looking for an app that scans the drive and can show me files/folders where all the data is sitting. I did a quick "get info" on each of the folders on my boot drive and the following is what I get:

http://www.spencerboerup.com/images/bootdrivesizes.png

Anyone have a recommended app, or know what might have gone on? No System Software updates, it might have gone to sleep but I doubt the sleep image is 40GB. Scratching my head here . . .

[Corndog5595]

I recommend GrandPerspective

[Novablas]

Hmm that really is odd, and you're saying that those pics are after you've noticed the tripled size? Yet they don't equal 60 gb... very weird.

Let us know if you figure out the problem.

[Vylen]

Terminal > du -sh /*

A good place to start to see the size of every directory in your root path.

[jedijoe]

Probably some bad logging in /var/log ?

[DoFoT9]

Probably some bad logging in /var/log ?
or a large chunk of virtual memory has stolen some space, a reboot will fix that.

do you run VMs OP? what software do you have installed?

[sboerup]

Yes, the pics above are AFTER the additional 40GB has appeared . . . yet they still equal the amount it was previous.

No VMs, nothing out of the ordinary. At first I thought it was a sleep file, but it has gone to sleep previously.

Thanks for the link on GrandPerspective, I remember using an app extremely similar when on Windows, so this was exactly what I was looking for. Yet, GrandPerspective also says a total size of 19.5GB . . .

When I 'Get Info' on my boot disk, this is what I get (Disk Utility shows the same stats):

http://www.spencerboerup.com/images/bootdiskusage.png

My drive is a 160GB Intel SSD. Previously it would say I had 140GB space left. It shows 85GB now because I just added a BootCamp Partition of 20GB for Win7. Nothing installed yet, I literally just did the bootcamp after this discussion started.

[DoFoT9]

i have absolutely no idea then if thats the case - repair disk permissions, reboot, reset PRAM etc, try the usual stuff.

[sboerup]

This is a screencap from GrandPerspective:

http://www.spencerboerup.com/images/grandperspective1.png

What is this "miscellaneous used space"???

[DoFoT9]

What is this "miscellaneous used space"???
that is a very good question! does it let you see at all in the detailed view?

[Vylen]

Miscellaneous used space: All used space that is not accounted for by the size of the scanned files. This includes the following:

Files that were not scanned, either because the scanned folder was not at the root of the volume, or the user did not have permissions to access all subfolders.
Files that are excluded by the filter (if any).
Disk space that is not accounted for because the Logical file size measure is used, which underestimates the space that files actually take up.
Low-level file system data, needed to store amongst others the folder hierarchy.


I still think you should do the terminal command I suggested :p

[sboerup]

jedijoe, how do I access the /var/log folder?

DoFoT9, yes it does, the largest file being Adobe Acrobat at a whopping 950mb. This is what it looks like (great app if you've never used it, helped me find about 10GB of obsolete large data files that I no longer needed on other drives but could never find). Here is my boot, color coded by Top Folder on the Boot Drive (apps being the largest portion, library, system, users):

http://www.spencerboerup.com/images/grandperspective2.png

[DoFoT9]

have you emptied the trash?? :rolleyes: :p

[sboerup]

I still think you should do the terminal command I suggested :p

No offense, I needed to verify what the command does before doing said commands from a stranger on the internetz :D

Here is the report:
9.7G /Applications
du: /Library/Application Support/Apple/ParentalControls/Users: Permission denied
2.6G /Library
0B /Network
du: /System/Library/DirectoryServices/DefaultLocalDB/Default: Permission denied
du: /System/Library/User Template: Permission denied
2.3G /System
87M /Users

[bamf]

I like the app Whatsize as well. It is a GUI for du -sh * basically.

[sboerup]

have you emptied the trash?? :rolleyes: :p

Yes, and rebooted multiple times since this morning. :)

[Pressure]

Give OmniDiskSweeper a try :)

[Vylen]

Finder > Go > Go to Folder

[Vylen]

No offense, I needed to verify what the command does before doing said commands from a stranger on the internetz :D

Here is the report:
9.7G /Applications
du: /Library/Application Support/Apple/ParentalControls/Users: Permission denied
2.6G /Library
0B /Network
du: /System/Library/DirectoryServices/DefaultLocalDB/Default: Permission denied
du: /System/Library/User Template: Permission denied
2.3G /System
87M /Users

There should be a lot more folders than that :confused:

[sboerup]

There should be a lot more folders than that :confused:

There were, just all different volumes, but this is everything that wasn't on a different /Volume/

Now that I understand this command, how do I get past the "permission denied", ie: root access search?

[Vylen]

There were, just all different volumes, but this is everything that wasn't on a different /Volume/

Now that I understand this command, how do I get past the "permission denied", ie: root access search?

sudo du -sh /*

Runs the command as root.

You should have folders like /bin /etc /dev /usr /var ... you know... folders that let the system run... heh

[sboerup]

OK, ran the command as root, nothing different . . .

One thought, since my home folder has been moved to a separate drive, is there a way that it is including data from the Home folder? Doesn't make sense that it would, but, just a though . . .

[sboerup]

Give OmniDiskSweeper a try :)

Cool app, here's the results. My quick math totals all of these just under 17GB.

http://www.spencerboerup.com/images/omnidisksweeper.png

[jedijoe]

you have to have directories like /bin /usr /var or your computer would simply not boot..

Try this instead in Terminal
for dir in /*; do sudo du -sh $dir; done
and
for dir in /private/*; do sudo du -sh $dir; done

[jedijoe]

Maybe your filesystem is corrupt.. this can cause the usage to report incorrectly.

You can verify your root disk in Disk Utility, but if there are errors, you have to repair it from a boot cd or another boot from disk....

[sboerup]

Ran Disk Utility and did verify and repair (from boot DVD), no errors . . . still coming up with 53GB used when previously it was 19.5GB yesterday . . . very strange.

[typecase]

My recommendation is to try daisyDisk. It offers a lot more useful disk info than the blocky bubbly display of your previous program. It has saved me tons of disk space and is by far one of the most intuitive programs I've ever used.

[sboerup]

My recommendation is to try daisyDisk. It offers a lot more useful disk info than the blocky bubbly display of your previous program. It has saved me tons of disk space and is by far one of the most intuitive programs I've ever used.

Doesn't look like DaisyDisk is showing my anything different:
http://www.spencerboerup.com/images/daisydisk.png

After all these apps and scans, is it safe to say that Finder is just showing bad data? What makes me most curious is that GrandPerspective is showing the "miscellaneous used space" of 30.5GB . . .

[jedijoe]

Maybe something crashed overnight and the 30GB used is in some resource fork or other filesystem metadata object. I dunno.

This is strange. Worse case you have to reformat the drive. Hopefully you an external drive.. If so, you can also use Carbon Copy Cloner (http://www.bombich.com/) to clone the drive to the external.. see if the extra used space gets brought over on the clone... If not, than you could format and then clone the external back to the SSD.

But it would suck to have to do all that. Did the terminal command I posted show anything different?

for dir in /*; do sudo du -sh $dir; done
for dir in /private/*; do sudo du -sh $dir; done

[sboerup]

I have SuperDuper and use it on a daily basis. It cloned my boot (after I found the extra space reporting) and it is also 18GB. This is all just very strange.

[reel2reel]

I have SuperDuper and use it on a daily basis. It cloned my boot (after I found the extra space reporting) and it is also 18GB. This is all just very strange.

Have you already tried revealing invisible items?